The 2nd International Life Science and Parapsychology Studies Association Forum and Sixth Sense Mind Sport Competition in Ha Long, Vietnam.
Tag: Leo Ruickbie
Paranormal Review 96
Parapsychology in the Far East The Paranormal Review has been more than a magazine for me, it has been a journey through all that is going on in the world of psychical research. And so, the magazine itself has been something like a documentary project. It can never be a pure documentation because I am…
The Witchcraft Trial of Jean Grenier
I Was A Real Teenage Werewolf: The Seventeenth Century Witchcraft Trial of Jean Grenier In 1603, the French teenager Jean Grenier was tried for assault, murder, cannibalism and witchcraft by the Parlement of Bordeaux. Despite the loss of the trial records, the case is known through the writing of Pierre de Lancre (1553?–1631), but was…
Paranormal Review 95
Star Gate (2): The US Government Programme on Psi Research, Part 2: Operational Psi With a letter from Tom Butler on the future of the SPR, I am delighted to see that the questions raised in my editorial for PR92 are still stimulating discussion. But as the debate continues, I see that the SPR suffers…
Paranormal Review 94
Star Gate (Part 1) In this issue, I am privileged to be able to bring you part one of a comprehensive overview of the US Government’s research programme on psi. From 1972 to 1995, various US militaries, agencies and departments contributed funding to a series of exotically codenamed projects, from Gondola Wish to Star Gate,…
Paranormal Review 92
The Other Side I walk over the bridge pictured on the front of this issue almost every day and when, early in the morning, the ground mist rises on the other side, it obliterates the real world beyond and turns this simple wooden footbridge into something magical, like Bifröst bridging the worlds to Asgard. The…
Leicester Through the Looking Glass
The 43rd Annual International Conference of the Society for Psychical Research, Leicester, 2019 Eyes closed, I held the folded piece of paper to my forehead. Nothing. A dried sheet of bleached wood pulp at room temperature. Then close to my ear, as if it might speak to me. Now, I began to get something: it…
Talking About War and the Paranormal
Angels in the Trenches on the Radio Angels in the Trenches author Leo Ruickbie spoke to Dave Shrader on syndicated US radio show Midnight in the Desert for Veterans’ Day 2019. Dr Ruickbie talked about the inspiration behind writing Angels in the Trenches: Spiritualism, Superstition and the Supernatural During the First World War and highlighted…
15th Anniversary of Witchcraft Out of the Shadows
It’s amazing to think that my first book was published fifteen years ago this year. A lot has happened since then, I got my PhD, published five more books and fifty-eight articles and chapters (as well as a ton of online posts), launched six websites and became the editor of the Paranormal Review. But Witchcraft…
Paranormal Review 91
The Roots of Reality This issue we turn to the problem of theory in parapsychology. Following a ‘Workshop on Psi Theories’ in Paris in 2019, SPR President Prof. Chris Roe addresses the question directly on pp. 4-5, with my report on the workshop on pp. 22-24. Dr Charles Whitehead takes the matter into his own…
The Catacombs of Paris
In the Empire of the Dead: A Journey Through the Catacombs of Paris There is a queue, there is always a queue. It curls round an unexpectedly uninteresting eighteenth-century building surrounded by busy roads in the Montparnasse district of Paris. And as we stand there in the summer sunshine, high spirits fade into boredom, tempered…
Psi Theories
For the Love of Theory: A Report on the Paris Workshop on Psi Theories With funding from the Society for Psychical Research and other organisations, a special meeting held before the 2019 Parapsychological Association Convention sought to bring together twenty-nine invited speakers and participants from a diverse range of the sciences to address the problem…
Angels in the Trenches Reviewed by Jayne Harris
The subject matter instantly grabbed my attention, as someone who has long held a fascination with spiritualism and the supernatural, especially from an anthropological point of view. I’ve always been in two minds about the rise of spiritualism during both world wars, questioning the motives of many mediums of that time. Brilliantly captured the wave…
Psi on the Tyne
The 42nd Annual International Conference of the Society for Psychical Research, Newcastle upon Tyne, 2018 Newcastle made a singular impression on me as I stepped off the train. The familiar Victorian station led out into a strange landscape. The Lady Boys of Bangkok had encamped before the rearing block of Jury’s Inn, the venue for…
Paranormal Review 89
The Paranormal Preservers PR89 is another ‘document or disappear’ issue, this time focusing on the Preserving the Historical Collections of the Paranormal (PHCP) conference that was held in Winnipeg, Canada, in May 2018. Following on from the first PHCP conference in Utrecht in 2014, this conference gave North American collectors, curators and experts the opportunity…
Paranormal Review 88
The SPR at War Following up on my new rallying cry of ‘document or disappear’, discussed in the last issue, I am publishing the results of my research into the Society for Psychical Research’s activities during the First World War. Having recently commemorated the Centenary of the Armistice, it is a fitting time to reflect…
The SPR at War
The Society for Psychical Research and the First World War On the evening of 6 August 1914, two days after Britain had declared war on Germany, Miss Ann Jones (a pseudonym)1 was sitting in her room, waiting for some friends to call, when she was overcome by what she described as ‘a feeling of great…
Angels in the Trenches Out Now!
New Book Explores Spiritualism, Superstition and the Supernatural During the First World War The mechanised slaughter of the First World War brought a sudden and concentrated interest in life after death, living in spite of death and trying to predict, or even influence, when the merciless killing would end. People asked, can one communicate with…